Such puzzles or toys are sometimes known as rotary combination toys as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,344,623, in which a central portion is provided with guide canopies through which movable outer blocks slide from position to position.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,655,201 eight cubes are magnetically engaged and are adapted to rotate in complementary sets of four about one of three mutually perpendicular axes.
Such prior art rotary combination toys and puzzles allow patterns or colors on three faces of each block or cube to be successively combined until a desired combination of numbers or colors are presented, e.g., in the type sold under the registered trademark "Rubik's Cube," in which each of the six faces of the overall cube are of one of six selected colors.
However, the prior art does not teach a puzzle which varies in overall shape, yielding a desired shape only in the proper combination. Further, the prior art structures either have complex interior mechanisms and parts and are difficult to assemble, reassemble, and rotate, such as the planetary mechanisms, with guide canopies and tracks of U.S. Pat. No. 4,344,623 cited above, or are so loosely structured and connected that they are difficult to rotate and tend to fall apart when rotated, such as the bar magnet building blocks of U.S. Pat. No. 3,655,201 cited above.